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The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.

Cesare Pavese

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Cesare Pavese
Age: 41 †
Born: 1908
Born: September 9
Died: 1950
Died: August 27
Biographer
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Editor
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
World
Rich
Childish
Within
Everlasting
Future
Skill
Experience
Possess
Found
Technique
Past
Skills
Made
Mystery
Time
Effort

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

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You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth, there is something that belongs to you, waiting for you when you are not there.
Cesare Pavese
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Narrating incredible things as though they were real old system narrating realities as though they were incredible the new.
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When a woman marries she belongs to another man and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her.
Cesare Pavese
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I thought of how many places there are in the world that belong in this way to someone, who has it in his blood beyond anyone else's understanding.
Cesare Pavese
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In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.
Cesare Pavese
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We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.
Cesare Pavese
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Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest - thought, action - is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.
Cesare Pavese
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You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.
Cesare Pavese
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Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
Cesare Pavese
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The search for a new personality is futile what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.
Cesare Pavese
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The act the act must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark.
Cesare Pavese
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Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
Cesare Pavese
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What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.
Cesare Pavese
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No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
Cesare Pavese
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A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.
Cesare Pavese
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Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven.
Cesare Pavese
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Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
Cesare Pavese
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Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.
Cesare Pavese
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Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.
Cesare Pavese
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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
Cesare Pavese